ASIA: Special Procedures should concentrate to justice institutional functionality for protection of people from human rights violations

An Oral Statement to the 36th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre

Mr. President,

The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) highly commends the works of the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Special Procedures have been greatly contributing to develop international jurisprudence for the promotion and protection of all forms of human rights, including the civil and political rights and the economic, social, and cultural rights.

The ALRC’s experiences of working in the Asian region suggest that the protection of human beings from severe forms of abuses is yet a far cry. Enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture and ill-treatment, incommunicado arbitrary detention, and denial of guaranteeing the right to fair trial are the way of state affairs in most Asian states including Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand where the ALRC and its sister organization the Asian Human Rights Commission actively work.

The reasons of the consistent violation of human rights by the law-enforcement agencies of the Asian States are mainly the absence of capable justice institutions. The policing system is coercive and torturous. The crime investigation and forensic medicine examination systems are still primitive, inefficient, and poorly equipped with modern unavoidable logistics. The prosecutorial and public attorney system is non-professional and substandard. The judiciary and its adjudication process seriously lack credibility. The overall basic institutions of justice do not strive for the purpose for administering justice. Rather, the institutions survive as facades to maintain the status quo of power structures of each of the jurisdictions of the nation-states.

The human rights mechanisms of the United Nations needs to explore effective and sustainable ways to address this entrenched problems for the purpose of protection of people in their real life so that the ultimate value of the jurisprudence truly reflect across the world.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) works towards the radical rethinking & fundamental redesigning of justice institutions in Asia, to ensure relief and redress for victims of human rights violations, as per Common Article 2 of the International Conventions. Sister organisation to the Asian Human Rights Commission, the ALRC is based in Hong Kong & holds general consultative status with the Economic & Social Council of the United Nations.
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